(My insurance company is supposed to cover one physical per calendar year. However, I am surprised to receive a bill from my doctor’s office. With it is a letter from the insurance company stating that they will not cover because I’ve had two physicals in one year. Since I know this is not true, I decide to call.)

Customer Service Rep: “Hello, this is [name]; how can I help you?”

Me: “I’m calling to dispute a denied claim. My name is [name] and my birth date is [birthday].”

Customer Service Rep: “Okay, I’m looking at your information now. Looks like you were denied coverage because you had two physicals in one year, and we only cover one per year.”

Me: “Yes, I know that. But I didn’t have two in one year. I’m looking at my records and the appointments were a year and a day apart.”

Customer Service Rep: “Hmm. Let me look at that again. Okay, according to what your doctor sent us, your most recent appointment was December 6th, and last year’s was December 5th. Oh, that is over a year. I’m so sorry!”

Me: “No worries. So what happened?”

Customer Service Rep: “Looks like someone on our end entered this year’s appointment as December 4th, which caused the system to reject the claim. I will fix that and re-submit it for you. I am so sorry!”

Me: “Hey, it’s all right.”

Customer Service Rep: “I wish I knew who did that! I’m really sorry, it wasn’t me…”

Me: “I’m not blaming you. I used to work in retail, so I know how it feels to get yelled at by a customer for something that’s out of your control.”

Customer Service Rep: “Oh! You understand!”

Me: “The stories I could tell… so do I need to call my doctor or anything?”

Customer Service Rep: “Nope. I just resubmitted it with the correct dates. There shouldn’t be any more issues. Thank you for being so nice!”

(I work for a particularly large financial company. On this particular day, I happen to be processing problem cases. This one has taken me all morning, and by lunch I realize that there had been a serious mistake made by another branch in the country. It’s probably going to require a compensation of at least $100,000 to the client, so I call my manager over.)

Manager: “What is it?”

Me: “Well, short version: someone at [branch] messed up really, really badly. This is going to be one huge escalation. Realistically, it’s probably going to cost someone their job.”

Manager: “Oh wow… okay. Let’s see who messed up.”

(He goes back to his workstation to check the history of the case. When he finds the person who had processed it, he goes pale and comes back to me.)

Manager: “Um… so, you know that case?”

Me: “Yep? Who do we need to speak to about it?”

Manager: “Uh… is it possible for you to just let this one go?”

Me: “Um, not legally, no. We messed up, and probably need to offer some serious compensation before the client goes to their lawyers. Protocol says the next step is to—”

Manager: “I know protocol! Okay, this is what I need you to do. Can you change the name on the process to say that you processed it?”

Me: “What? Why?!”

Manager: “Um, yeah… just do it, okay?”

(With that, he walks away looking very pale and immediately grabs his phone and walks out of the office. I sit in shock for a few moments then go and check for myself who had processed the case: it was his daughter. When he comes back, I refuse to take the fall for the serious error. He blows up at me and threatens to fire me on the spot. However, I report it all to the state manager. That’s not the end of the story, though: it was discovered that they had been stealing money from the company for the last six months! The daughter slipped up, causing the mistake that I had been working on fixing. They were both fired and were up on criminal charges. Last I heard, he was in jail. Apparently, it wasn’t the first job he had stolen from.)